


Furr

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Fantasystuck [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, fantasystuck, i mean not really but still, offscreen character death (it's jade's grandpa), werewolves? sort of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21732757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: You might be the last to add to the song, partially because you're afraid that you won't be good enough, but it sounds...right. Your howl fits neatly into the pack's song, perfect as any of theirs, and as you raise your muzzle to the sky you understand that it's not just your voice that fits in here. Your fur's darker than any of theirs, nearly pitch black flecked with tiny white-grey patches that match the sky you sing to, but you still belong. You're still meant to cry to the moon. And when the white wolf rises to his feet and nuzzles your shoulder, you know to let yourself be pushed over, roll on your back and show your belly so he and the others can sniff at you.Several of them tell you that you smell more natural as a pup than you did as a human. There's no way to tell if they think that's a good thing, but your tail wags anyway.Jade Harley is not quite normal.
Series: Fantasystuck [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/912336
Comments: 11
Kudos: 65





	Furr

**Author's Note:**

> I would suggest giving Blitzen Trapper's song Furr a listen, since it's what inspired this!

You've heard the wolves ever since you can remember, but you start really listening to them when you're...eight, maybe? Yes, eight years old, young enough to listen to the howling and understand what you hear in it, old enough to know that there really should not be _actual words_ for you _to_ hear. Not that it's really words, as such—you couldn't give a direct tranlation to anyone else. The best you could do is paraphrase, and it never occurs to you to do that.

When you're nine, you tell your Poppop. Even when you're doing it you can tell that he doesn't know how to handle it, but then again how _do_ you handle your granddaughter just sort of announcing that the wolves would really like for someone to do something about the woman in the closest town, who's been putting out poisoned bait that's killing the animals they've been blamed on taking for nearly a month? 

At least he does do something about her, though. Or tell someone who can do something, maybe—you're not even sure what's been done, but by the time he sits you down for the talk the wolves haven't complained about that problem for two nights. It's good that they haven't, because you definitely could not concentrate on his whole patient explanation on how you can and should listen, but you mustn't do any more than that. 

"Just because you understand them doesn't mean they're going to understand that you're _like_ them," he tells you, looking up to meet your eyes. (You're trying very hard to not giggle about that—he put you on the counter and pulled a chair around to sit in for this talk, and it's put you as much higher than him as he'd usually be than you.) "They don't know you're this close to being like them—I don't want you to get hurt, Jade." 

You consider telling him that no, they know exactly who you are. Most nights they sing your name, after all, or something in their wild language that means the same thing, and at least a few times you've seen the shape of something that isn't a dog pause at the edge of the woods just long enough for dark eyes to fix on you and a keen nose to test and remember your scent. The wolves are always near; you'd know they are even if you didn't see them. 

But Poppop seems really serious about wanting you to stay away from them, so... "Okay, Poppop." 

He watches you a moment longer, one hand coming up to smooth down his mustache as the worry-lines between his green eyes deepen. "Promise me?" 

You were _hoping_ he wouldn't ask you to do that. "I promise I'll leave the wolves alone." 

"Good girl." Your Poppop smiles and rises to his feet, scooping you off the counter and spinning you around twice before setting you down on the kitchen floor. You're just glad you manage to get your fingers safely uncrossed before he notices.

* * *

When you're ten, something happens to your Poppop. You're old enough to understand exactly what it is, but...

No. You can't think about it. Even if it happens to everyone eventually—not just people as old as your Poppop but _everyone_ , you know that everyone dies—you don't want to think about it. People die, you know that, you know he—you _know_ , but you absolutely refuse to think about the fact that he did. 

You won't ever think about the four days when you were the only one alive in the house, so you probably won't ever remember what was going through your head when you stepped out into the moonlight, carefully locking the door behind yourself and sliding the key under the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor before turning to walk into the darker shade beneath the trees. You do remember how the howls rose around you, though—that's not something you're ever going to be able to forget. 

It probably should have been scary, but it isn't. You aren't afraid, not even when the first furry body brushes up against you. He's so much _bigger_ than you thought he'd be—when he circles around you, white fur tickles your chin, and his tongue nearly covers your whole face when he licks it. 

You're instantly covered in drool. It's slimy, it's kind of gross, and despite that you suddenly feel _safe._ You've been scared for—you don't know how long, you didn't count the days. Since Poppop couldn't get up that first morning, you guess. Maybe longer—you've known things weren't right for a while—but that was when it got bad. 

But now there's a back of furry bodies nudging against you, gentle enough to not threaten your balance even though each one weights as much or more than a grown man, and you're safe. You're safe. You are _safe._

Someone whines. Someone else growls. The great white wolf sits back on his haunches, waits a moment for the others to clear a little space around him and you, raises his muzzle to the moon and begins to howl. For a moment it's just his voice crying to the moon and the stars in the sky; then one by one, the rest of the pack joins in. 

You might be the last to add to the song, partially because you're afraid that you won't be good enough, but it sounds...right. Your howl fits neatly into the pack's song, perfect as any of theirs, and as you raise your muzzle to the sky you understand that it's not just your voice that fits in here. Your fur's darker than any of theirs, nearly pitch black flecked with tiny white-grey patches that match the sky you sing to, but you still belong. You're still meant to cry to the moon. And when the white wolf rises to his feet and nuzzles your shoulder, you know to let yourself be pushed over, roll on your back and show your belly so he and the others can sniff at you. 

Several of them tell you that you smell more natural as a pup than you did as a human. There's no way to tell if they think that's a good thing, but your tail wags anyway. 

Eventually, the white wolf yips, and you twist back to your feet just fast enough that you're not left behind as the pack bolts. It doesn't occur to you until much, much later that you shouldn't have left Poppop's body alone in the house, but you guess that the moment that you slid the key under the door was already too late to think about that.

* * *

For a long time this is your life. Or maybe it's not a long time—you stay pretty much as you are, a puppy, half-grown and gawky and always ready to eat. There's other puppies, though, ones that go from blind balls of fur to siblings that might as well be your littermates to grown wolves who take their turn to teach the newest pups to hunt, so maybe it _is_ a long time. 

You don't think it matters either way, though. Time's only a big deal to humans and others who walk on two legs, and you haven't even _seen_ one of those since your flesh turned to fur. For wolves, time doesn't matter beyond the changing of the seasons. 

And then. 

And then someone—two people whose scents you don't recognise—come to your Poppop's house. You don't actually see them, but you don't have to; smells are more clear now than your sight ever was, and there's bright unfamiliar unsettling traces of them all around the house. The white wolf lets you circle and whine for a while before he plants himself in your path, nipping at the side of you neck when you try to slip by and check the door again. 

You growl at him and inform him that this is not even sort of right. 

He mouths at your ear with the barest hint of a bite and tells you tat it doesn't have anything to do with the pack and that you are overreacting. 

You point out that it has to do with _you_ , since this is _your_ house. 

He sits back on his haunches and yawns, and asks you when exactly wolves started claiming dirt as their own. 

You struggle to come up with an argument. There probably is a good one somewhere, but whatever it is is beyond your attention span. In the end you just show him your teeth and whirl away, bolting in any direction that isn't towards the horrible, unfamiliar scents.

* * *

You come back, of course. It's the next day, after a night of running and hunting that pretty much manages to make you forget how upset you were before. 

Well, sort of forget it. You're aware that you _were_ upset, but the emotion itself escapes you right now. Hopefully coming here alone will help you keep it that way. 

_Hopefully_ isn't good enough, though, because the door is open. The door should be _closed._ You left it closed. Who'd open it? Who'd leave it open? 

Whoever it is, they're still in there. Not only do you smell two new and distinct scents—one almost familiar and close enough to a faintly remembered smell that you can't keep your tail from tucking between your legs, one sharp and heavy with spices that don't smell familiar or even really human—but you can hear their voices from inside. From inside your Poppop's house. From inside _your_ house. 

(Never mind that you haven't been inside it since you walked on two legs.) 

If your tail was not already as far down as it could be, it'd be going there now as you whine and slowly edge through the door, struggling to keep your ears perked up enough to hear the conversation. 

"I still say it's awfully creepy, Dirk." 

"A dead human's 'creepy?'" That's the not-quite-human one. Human voices don't carry the ghost of emotions with them, forcing echoes through senses that aren't meant to carry them and making you one hundred percent sure that he's amused enough to nearly laugh. You really want to sneeze right now. "Really? I _know_ you've seen corpses before—" 

"I'm a bloody _gardener_ , you idiot. I'm not supposed to have to see corpses." 

"But you have." 

There's a substantial pause, which is unfortunate because you don't dare move when no one's talking. Then, "...yes, fine, I have, but this is worse and you know it." 

"Do I?" 

"Yes!" 

"Oh. Honestly, I think he's much...better preserved than I expected, after so long." The citrus-scented not-quite-human—Dirk, his name is—sighs, the sound carrying a breath of thoughtfulness to you. "It's almost impressive." 

You hunker down almost flat against the floor, peeking through the open door to your Poppop's room. From here you can't quite see the top of the bed—thankfully—but you _can_ see the two people here. One's golden-haired, his skin almost luminous agains his dark, sleeveless shirt as he leans over the contents of the bed, the other...

Well. 

He doesn't have a mustache and he's neither tall not broad enough, but something about his scent and the glimpse you get of his face in profile before he turns back to Dirk is almost achingly familiar. You don't know him—you can't know him, you never met him—but nevertheless you're somehow almost certain that he's your kin. 

Except. He's not. The pack's the only family you have, this is...this is ridiculous. 

"I don't think 'impressive' is the word you're looking for," the man who's got your ears back says, before you can quite sort out your feelings enough to finish that thought. "Bodies shouldn't be this—this _clean_ , not after eight years. It's not _natural._ " 

Dirk looks up from his examination, mouth twisting wryly. "Isn't that what that old biddy said when she realized we were—" 

He stops talking, because he sees _you._ Even as still as you are, as dark as your fur is and as deep as the shadows you're lurking in are, _he sees you._

You feel the fur along your spine raising, and you bare your teeth, but Dirk doesn't move. He doesn't take his eyes off you either, and for some reason that means _you_ can't move, like your paws are rooted to the floor. You _can_ stand up, though, and you do, struggling to keep the growl in your chest from escaping. 

"Jake," Dirk says, much too calmly, "turn around. _Slowly._ " 

Either Jake is not very good at following directions or his definition of _slow_ is different from yours, because he spins around to face you fast enough to draw a startled sound out of your throat. He looks even more like your Poppop htan you thought he did, even when he's wide-eyed and pale with fear under his tan. "Dirk—" 

"Shh." 

"Dirk, that's a _wolf_ —" 

"No she isn't. Not quite." Dirk still hasn't moved. You need him to move. _You_ need to move. "Hold out your hand to her." 

"You're insane. You can't lose your mind _now_ —" 

"I know what I'm doing." Dirk blinks, and so do you half a heartbeat later. "I can't geas you into not being afraid, not when I'm holding her—trust me, all right?" 

"But—" 

"Jake, _please._ " 

The pleading note in Dirk's voice pulls a whine from you, and Jake flinches at it. You're not sure if it's that or Dirk's obvious desparation that does it, but Jake lets out a shaky breath, raising one hand to push his glasses more safely onto his nose before holding that hand out to you, taking a hesitant step forward. 

You growl—humans shouldn't be so close to you—and Jake's green eyes go even wider. He thinks he's going to be bit, you know he does (you _do_ want to bite him, after all) but somehow he still doesn't back away. 

Another step forward, and your line of sight to Dirk is cut off. You could lunge at Jake now. You could _run_ now. 

Instead of doing either of those things, you edge a few inches closer to him, lifting your head to nudge at his fingers with your nose. It's weird, because you never smelled your Poppop with a wolf's nose, and it's _horrible_ , because now you know exactly what his scent would have been like. You can put a color to it now even though wolf eyes don't see the same spectrum that humans do—he's green like growing things, rosemary and geranium and the earth they grow from, wound through with the sharp bite of gunpowder around and under the rich scents of the earth. 

No. Oh, no, please—you don't remember how to feel about this. You don't know if you want to remember. You don't want to remember. 

But it's already too late for that—you're weeping now, sobs that're broken by painful gasps that aren't quite inverted howls, and when you try to paw at your muzzle you don't _have_ a muzzle. You don't have paws. You don't have _fur_ , other than on new canine ears and the tail that's still trying to tuck between human legs and failing thanks to the skirt you're somehow still wearing, and even that fur's the wrong color—white like the pack leader's instead of black flecked with silver. 

You're still yourself. You're not yourself. There's a crack between the two sides of yourself, and although you're ten and however much more your time as a wolf gave you, the only course left to you at this point seems to be to sit back on your heels and howl for your pack. 

Your voice is wrong and they don't come, though. Somewhere in there Jake picks you up. Even to your mostly-human nose he carries the scent of your Poppop; maybe it's a betrayal, but you lay your head on his shoulder and slowly let yourself go from howling to merely sobbing. 

You're tired. You're so tired. Jake and Dirk are both murmuring to you and to each other, promising that you won't be hurt and trying to discuss what'll happen to you now; after a moment of struggling to pay attention, you decide that you're going to believe them on the former point, not even try to think about the latter, and go to sleep.


End file.
